John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is unbelievable to think that in 2015 the Simon Community would declare there to be, and use the terminology, "a humanitarian crisis in Ireland". If one heard that description in any other country, one would wonder what the hell was going on, were thousands of people dying or being imprisoned or tortured, but in a sense that is exactly what is going on. If one meets people on the housing list - people whose children and their children are living with their mothers in houses - people who are struggling, with the support of high rent allowance or no rent allowance, to pay the high rent charged by the landlord, one will see that they are close to the edge, on a knife-edge or blade-edge, of living in terrible conditions and then they could find themselves out on the street. That is how close it is. Somebody used the analogy that if a family is in the middle-income category in America, that family is close to being impoverished. The position in Ireland is that if one does not have a reasonable wage, if one cannot pay the rent or if one's landlord is overcharging, one is close to, and on, the edge. The Simon Community was correct in what it said - this is a humanitarian crisis.

Any Deputy or councillor worth his or her salt speaks to the people who come into their consistency offices and those people may start to cry, may be distressed or, sometimes, they may be suicidal and all for what but the constitutional right to own a house, or have a house or live in a home. It is unacceptable and unimaginable that in 2015 the number of people on the housing list would climb. The Minister can speak about five years of a recession but we must remember that the five years prior to that Ireland was regarded as one of the richest countries in the world and one of the most prosperous countries in Europe. We are now at the stage where more than 100,000 of our citizens are homeless. It is a humanitarian crisis.

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